What is your reaction/response to this Dana Milbank column?
http://tinyurl.com/crbm3vvHateful speech on hate groups
Dana Milbank
August 16, 2012
-- snip --
Human Rights Campaign isn’t responsible for the shooting. Neither should the organization that deemed the FRC a “hate group,” the Southern Poverty Law Center, be blamed for a madman’s act. But both are reckless in labeling as a “hate group” a policy shop that advocates for a full range of conservative Christian positions, on issues from stem cells to euthanasia.
I disagree with the Family Research Council’s views on gays and lesbians. But it’s absurd to put the group, as the law center does, in the same category as Aryan Nations, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Stormfront and the Westboro Baptist Church. The center says the FRC “often makes false claims about the LGBT community based on discredited research and junk science.” Exhibit A in its dossier is a quote by an FRC official from 1999 (!) saying that “gaining access to children has been a long-term goal of the homosexual movement.”
Offensive, certainly. But in the same category as the KKK?
-- snip --
The Family Research Council’s president, Tony Perkins, said Thursday that “Corkins was given a license to shoot an unarmed man by organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center.” This goes too far. Nobody gave Corkins a license to kill. But at the same time, “hate,” a strong word, has been used too loosely — whether it’s Mitt Romney telling President Obama to take his “campaign of division and anger and hate back to Chicago,” or the Southern Poverty Law Center lumping a Christian policy group in with hooded bigots.
-- snip --
Those who support gay rights will gain nothing by sticking inflammatory labels on their opponents . . . .
= new reply since forum marked as read
as reactionary and pro-GOP. And unless I'm mistaken, he's married to a woman, which would tend to indicate he's not gay. And also, as I recall, he supported the invasion of Iraq.
Thus, he's entitled to his views, but he does not speak for me, nor would I be willing to look at him as any kind of authority on how I, as a gay person, should regard the FRC.
If, on the other hand, Barney Frank or Tammy Baldwin were making these arguments, then in my opinion that would be something else altogether, making them comments worthy of consideration and reflection.
But coming from a heterosexual with a conservative editorial record with which I'm familiar, his comments on this issue are not worth my time.
But I appreciate that you took the time to post the thread. Cheers. 
Please consider siding with MLK rather than Dana Milbank.
No, don't. What this guy, who I heard of the first time today, wrote, is asking us (and I apologize for using the 'us' and 'we' in this matter, since I'm not LGTB, but I make no differences,) to keep the mouth shut while others can go on and on. I think we've heard the same stuff on DU, from DU members, a millionth of time: "Just keep quiet, we're coming to your cause, but every time you speak up, you make it worse."
Don't fall for this. Silence has never brought anything forward, ever. And I don't see what's 'inflammatory' by addressing a hate group a hate group. If they weren't a hate group, well, then we could discuss the use of term here. They are a hate group. Period. And it works always both ways.
Right now, you're probably seeing political ads which are official and don't lack any inflammatory content, on the contrary. But we have to keep our mouths shut? We have to stand outside and hopefully wait for our turn? Because otherwise we will gain nothing? And, besides, of what 'gain' does this guy speak of? I haven't heard of any promises made - so there's not much we can lose; in fact, nothing.
So, do we just give the megaphone to the other guy who's reciting Leviticus as the founder of the USA and keep silent? Will we get our full rights then? You bet.
ACT UP produced stuff like this:
You should see some of the European AIDS-Campaigns. Pretty impressive. If you have to draw attention and awareness, you better be good and edgy. If you just give out flyers saying 'please don't AIDS,' nobody will care.
I am just afraid that we aren't there yet where being silent will bring us forward no matter what.
and KOS also, answer this after I am finished ranting about Milbank's elitist, dominant culture pro-hate group spew.
Dana Milbank is not LGBT, and he does not have to be concerned about some hateful freak beating the shit out of him, stealing his children, or even murdering him every time he walks out the door. He is obviously not concerned about the astounding number of LGBTIQ suicides, assaults, murders, and travesties of justice that occur largely as a consequence of the filthy lies about LGBTIQ persons that are spread by these hate groups, and as a consequence of the actions of these groups as well.
I guarantee, if these hate groups were persecuting and spreading filthy lies about blacks, and preventing blacks from getting married in the exact same way that these hate groups prevent LGBT persons from getting married and having equal rights, Milbank would be screaming bloody murder on a daily basis and calling for the heads of the leaders of these groups, and would not stop until the issue was resolved.
But as I'm sure that you are well aware, my dear BerthaVenation, the bottom line is that, in Dana Milbanks' institutionalized homophobic mind, we are, in reality just a bunch of silly queers, and silly queers have no business pointing out that nasty groups of people are causing them to be assaulted, murdered, and commit suicide in ever increasing record numbers, and how dare we silly queers try to make the world aware that these hate groups are preventing us from attaining equal rights. We silly queers need to know our place!
Dana Milbank has now lost a whole lot of progressive cred by unwittingly revealing his obvious institutionalized homophobia.
Perkins’ accusation is outrageous. The SPLC has listed the FRC as a hate group since 2010 because it has knowingly spread false and denigrating propaganda about LGBT people — not, as some claim, because it opposes same-sex marriage. The FRC and its allies on the religious right are saying, in effect, that offering legitimate and fact-based criticism in a democratic society is tantamount to suggesting that the objects of criticism should be the targets of criminal violence.
Perkins and his allies, seeing an opportunity to score points, are using the attack on their offices to pose a false equivalency between the SPLC’s criticisms of the FRC and the FRC’s criticisms of LGBT people. The FRC routinely pushes out demonizing claims that gay people are child molesters and worse — claims that are probably false. It should stop the demonization and affirm the dignity of all people.
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/news/splc-family-research-council-license-to-kill-claim-outrageous
TWO Director of Communications John Becker also rejected Perkins' perspective, saying that insisted that "yesterday's senseless act of violence does not exonerate the Family Research Council and other anti-gay hate groups from the decades they've spent slandering, demonizing, and actively lying about the LGBT community."
He went on, "The Southern Poverty Law Center - a venerable civil rights organization that monitors and documents extremism across the country - rightfully labeled the Family Research Council an anti-gay hate group because of its extensive history of spreading malicious, hateful falsehoods about gay people. FRC is not a hate group because of its public policy views, as Mr. Perkins has alleged. It is a hate group because it earned that designation."
http://www.towleroad.com/2012/08/truth-wins-out-tony-perkins-cannot-be-allowed-to-exploit-frc-shooting.html#ixzz23llG1cC3
So, Dana. Maybe you should check before you excuse hate groups from being called hate groups because you don't find the people who speak for them hateful. Are you not familiar with the fact that people lie?
We have a long road to equality ahead of us, and shutting the fuck up like these "sensible woodchucks" want us to is not going to get us anywhere but back where we came from.
"These uppity gays need know their
place, and should STFU about
people and groups that are
actively trying to destroy
their lives!!!"
Are you trying to kill us all? 
I replied upthread.
Bigotry is bigotry. Hate is hate. As with many things, a spectrum. And a slippery slope. We're moving away from that.
